Struggling Celtics need to refocus

Celtics coach Brad Stevens issued a warning to his players just as they were about to exhale six weeks ago. It's probably about time to remind them of the consequences of ignoring it.

By Scott Souza/Daily News Staff

BOSTON — Celtics coach Brad Stevens issued a warning to his players just as they were about to exhale six weeks ago.

It’s probably about time to remind them of the consequences of ignoring it.

It was a Saturday afternoon practice amid the final stretch of the team’s brutal December schedule. A trip to London was on the horizon, a 12-games-in-19-days stretch was behind the team, and the players were feeling pretty good about themselves after coming back from 26 points down to beat the Houston Rockets two days earlier.

With the London trip, the team would play once in nine days. The schedule promised to ease after that. The way some people looked at it, the Celtics had already made it through the toughest part of the regular season.

“You just go through what you need to,” Stevens said of the forecast with more rest moving forward, “and realize that you are going to have a little bit more time to do things now. But still stay with your foot on the gas. That’s where we have to be.”

It’s not where the Celtics have been for the past month.

Since returning from London, the Celtics have gone just 6-8. There have been nights when they have displayed all the intensity, urgency, and passion that they did earlier in the season — most notably when they went 3-0 with Kyrie Irving on the shelf with a quad bruise — but there have been an increasing number of days like Sunday’s 121-99 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers at TD Garden when the lapses, the big deficits, and the reliance on making shots over running an offense have caught up to them.

In the process, the Toronto Raptors have caught them in the Eastern Conference — Boston now sits two games behind the Raptors in the loss column — with the Cavaliers re-emerging as an object that is closer than it may appear in the rearview mirror.

While Stevens said he does not question the “fight” on his team, it may be time for him to find ways to get it to refocus with days off and downtime potentially paving a path for that focus to wander.

“I think that offensively we need to have more pace to what we do,” Celtics forward Al Horford said after Sunday’s blowout. “We need to make sure that we play at a high intensity all 48 minutes. We need to be very engaged for 48 minutes. I feel like in the past [few games] we have taken a step back on that.”

They made it about 18 minutes on Sunday before things fell apart.

“I thought we came out, we were ready, we were playing with great pace,” Stevens said. “I thought our first unit played really well right out of the gate. Then I thought that they did a great job of getting some aggressive plays — pushing some of our catches out, turning us over a few times at the end of the first half and that lead to some baskets. It kind of changed the complexion of the game.

“From there I think they just dominated the game. I don’t think there was any one area. I thought it was pretty much they dominated the game.”

The Celtics had a film day on Monday before they were set to get back to practice on Tuesday. After Wednesday’s game against the Los Angeles Clippers, the players will leave for the All-Star break. They are scheduled to reconvene back in Waltham mid-week next week ahead of a back-to-back in Detroit in New York.

Irving said on Sunday that it could be beneficial long-term for the Celtics to deal with these struggles before the All-Star break and come back stronger for the playoff push.

That starts with getting any feet that have gotten a tad relaxed and planting them firmly back on that gas pedal.

“I’m just interested to see how we respond,” Irving said on Sunday. “It takes first, individually, going back and doing the things we need to do to learn [from these losses]. Then, as a group, we all come back together.”

Scott Souza can be reached at ssouza@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Scott_Souza.

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